Part of the mystique of blogs is their protean quality: They work both sides of the divide between politics and media, further blurring the already fuzzy distinctions between reporter, pundit, political operative, activist, and citizen.
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[Blogging] opens up political journalism to a vast marketplace of competitors, reminiscent of earlier ages of pamphleteering.
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The campaign of 2004 is important not just for the arrival of blogs. Thanks to September 11, this happens to be one of those rare years when a real election will take place.
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Especially during the Clinton years, with the Cold War over and the economy flush, politics grew more and more into a spectacle of personalities and gossip-mongering, a trend both reflected and furthered by the political journalism of those years.
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Campaign coverage in 2004 still belongs to that era — nowhere more than in the blogosphere, where the claustrophobic effect of the echo chamber and the hall of mirrors is at its most intense, where the reverberations of trivialities last far longer than in print or on TV.

George Packer, The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged (via Megawatt)